NINE
The first thing the crew of the exploration vessel saw on the surface of Chalcedony fifty years ago, when the planet was still an undesignated potential colony world, was the Golden Column. From orbit it appeared as a truncated golden glow, five kilometres in diameter and thirty kilometres tall. It had been, according to the memoirs of the ship’s Captain, a staggering enough feature viewed during spiral-down. At close quarters, however, it had taken the exploration team’s collective breath away with its strange aura of otherness and permanence. It glowed with power and dominated the landscape for a hundred kilometres, something obviously not naturally occurring but constructed—to what purpose could only be guessed at.
And fifty years of scientific investigation had failed to come up with any answers. Team after team, prestigious foundation after foundation, had probed the light of the Column, attempted to enter it, tried to assess its age and composition, to no avail. Scientific teams still set up camp around the base of the Column, minutely examining it with their sophisticated instruments, but they were outnumbered by the hundreds of religious cults which offered more mystical solutions to the Column’s provenance and purpose.
I was driving. Hawk sat beside me, while Maddie and Matt sat in the back.
We had passed through the series of low hills that backed Magenta Bay, with their silver waterfalls filling natural sinks and lagoons on a hundred levels, and were now heading across the central plain. Ahead were the interior mountains, a long enfilade of jagged purple peaks; our way was through them, to the flat upland beyond, where the Column stood.
“Look,” Maddie said, pointing between the front seats. She was indicating the cloud cover above the mountains, which had broken momentarily to reveal the upper stretches of the Column. Even at this distance, and seen through rapidly closing clouds, the glow was dazzling, like sunlight made suddenly solid.
Then the cloud cover closed again, and all that could be seen of the Column was its diffuse glow through the banked cumuli. I accelerated along the straight, high road that ran through the chequered fields of farmland on either side.
Hawk was saying, “The Ashentay have revered the Column as far back as their history goes. They have a series of legends about the Column.”
“I thought the Ashentay couldn’t read or write?” Matt said. “
They can’t. Their history is oral, passed down from designated story-tellers to story-tellers of each generation.”
“Has your little girlfriend told you this?” Maddie asked.
Hawk grinned. “Who else? We settlers don’t have much interest in the Ashentay. We’re more interested in the Column, or the alien races who possess technology equivalent to or in advance of our own. A bunch of hunter-gatherers, even though their history is rich and fascinating, don’t get a look in.”
I said, “What do the Ashentay say about the Column?”
“They claim it was planted by a race of gods who came here ten thousand years ago. The gods said nothing to the Ashentay to explain what they were doing; they simply drove the Column into the earth and then left. The Ashentay thought it a test. When they’ve worked out the purpose of the Column, then they’ll join the Makers in their equivalent of Heaven.”
“And have they worked out the purpose of the Column?” I asked.
Hawk said, “They have plenty of theories.”
Matt was leaning forward, his head emerging through the front seats, interested. “Such as?”
“Well… the one that Kee subscribes to says that the Column is heaven itself. Once entered, it will prove to be of infinite dimensions, with room enough for all the races of the galaxy. Life everlasting awaits those who enter.”
“Except,” Maddie put in, “no one has ever entered it.”
“Right,” Hawk said. “Kee says that only the virtuous and supremely good can even attempt to step through the light of the Column. In death, the good pass through immediately.”
“That’s just one theory,” Matt said. “But they have others?”
“Scads of them,” Hawk laughed. “One says that the Column was placed there to watch over the Ashentay, to ensure they didn’t go down the path of technology, or else it would destroy them all. Another has it that the Makers did communicate with the Ashentay—they told them that they would return in twenty thousand years, and if the Column was still standing and in good repair, that’d be an indication of the Ashentays’ virtue. Then they’d be allowed into the light and experience eternal life. Another theory is that the column is a bridge to the stars. Of course they didn’t know that the Column is only thirty kays high—they think it goes all the way up, without stopping.” He paused, then said, “Take your pick.”
“I’m not sure that any of them appeal,” Maddie said, “but then what have our scientists come up with?”
Matt said, “Only that it’s constructed from some material unknown to humankind, that it’s porous but unbreachable, emits a powerful light but, and this is interesting, the light is cold. You can walk right up to the Column and touch it without burning yourself.”
Hawk said, “Don’t the various religious cults charge you to approach their section of the Column?”
Surprised, I said, “They do?”
Matt explained, “The circumference of the Column is sectioned off, with each cult having a small slice. Some claim that miracles—cures and vanishings and visions—have occurred at their sections, and so make an appropriate charge.”
Maddie said, “Typical…”
“If what Maddie experienced the other night is true,” Hawk said, “then we know who made the Column. The question remains: why was it made? There was obviously some—I don’t know—technological reason for it.”
“Is there, Hawk?” Matt said. “What if it’s, say, a work of art, or a religious symbol, or something so alien we have no hope of ever understanding its significance?”
Hawk nodded. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. It’s just that I have the kind of brain that demands rational, scientific explanations.”
“Most of us do,” I said. “We live in that kind of age. Centuries ago it would have been ascribed to the glory of a Creator, and left at that.”
Maddie said, “But even if what I felt was correct, then are we any closer to understanding what the Column is all about?”
“Well, we can’t be much farther away than we were,” Matt grunted.
I said, “It has a maker, and we’re in some kind of contact with that maker. Isn’t it only a matter of time before we make a breakthrough?”
We sat and thought about that for a while as we climbed from the central plain, leaving behind the neat, parcelled farmland and following the twisting road into the foothills. The vegetation changed too; gone were the rows of cash crops regimented by settlers, to be replaced by alien trees and shrubs, green but bearing strange multicoloured fruits and flowers. I saw many examples I had not seen before on my drive to and from MacIntyre, shocking silver blooms and dazzling red fruits: it was like travelling through some crazed artist’s impression of an alien world, and the Ring of Tharssos, scintillating through the heavens above us, only heightened the effect.
As we climbed it became cooler, but not uncomfortably so. We had set off just after midday and it was now three. We had another two hours to drive before we reached the Column.
The road switch-backed up through the mountains, becoming narrower as we progressed, and I hoped we wouldn’t meet a vehicle heading in the opposite direction. I slowed to a crawl, not bothering to look to my right at the precipitous drop that began half a metre from my shoulder.
At last we came to a cutting between two rearing peaks and passed into its shadow.
Seconds later we emerged again into sunlight and began to descend. Then we rounded a bend, and the sight that greeted us compelled me to brake suddenly and stare ahead, and up, in amazement.
I’ve heard that the first sight of great mountains has a similar effect on people: the first Westerners to behold Mount Everest were stopped in their tracks, rendered breathless by something so huge emerging from the earth before them.
I just gaped, open mouthed, as I took in the enormity of the Golden Column.
We were still ten kilometres from the Column, but it dominated everything about it, the plain on which it stood and the surrounding mountain ranges. It emerged en bloc from the flat, green plain, a vast rounded pillar that rose and rose and didn’t stop. Collectively we craned our necks, but still we were unable to make out where the Column terminated: its upper reaches were wreathed in cloud.
But, perhaps more striking even than its vast dimensions, was the glow that it emanated. It was a gold I had never imagined could exist, a bright, almost pulsating effulgence. It filled me with wonder and a strange, tearful emotion I could not place.
We were silent as we stared.
Finally Matt said, “Worth the trip?”
Hawk said, “You kidding? Look at the thing.”
“I’ve never seen anything so…” Maddie began.
“What makes it all the more amazing,” I said at last, “is the fact that we know who made it.”
A silence greeted my words as we all took this in.
I gathered myself and restarted the engine, and slowly we descended the mountain road towards the plain.
Still in the foothills, we looked down and saw, spread around from the base of the Column, what looked at this distance like a refugee transit camp. The area was crowded with thousands of people, their vehicles, tents and portable domes. At this elevation the roughly circular spread of pilgrims resembled a vast pie chart, each segment a different wedge of colour, great triangles of saffron and mauve, white and red, conforming to the uniforms of that section’s devotees.
I considered the explorers who had first discovered the Column, and how wonderful it must have been to view the marvel in its pristine state, unadulterated by the meretricious infection of human beliefs and prejudices. It struck me as arrogant that these people had claimed the Column in the name of their own belief systems, and the sight of the massed pilgrims sickened me.
Evidently Matt felt the same. “Why can’t we just leave things alone?” he said, almost under his breath. “Look at it, the sublime and the ridiculous.”
A great ring road had been constructed, to take arriving traffic to the section of their choice. We came to the road along with a jam of other vehicles and headed anti-clockwise around the Column. To our left we passed shanty towns of tents and domes, and pilgrims going about their various rites of obeisance.
Maddie read from a signboard posted at the side of the road. “This way to the Enlightenment of Krishna, four miles; the Church of the Ultimate, six miles; The One True Way, eight miles…”
“Isn’t there a place for agnostics?” Hawk wanted to know. “When I came a few years ago,” Matt said, “I found a government run area that allowed tourists and visiting scientists a close view. But back then it was never this busy.”
Maddie said, “Perhaps that’s it.” She pointed to a signpost: Chalcedony Research Centre welcomes visitors, two miles. “We could try it,” I said.
We passed a mass of saffron-robed neo-Buddhists and came to a relatively quiet area, cordoned off from its neighbours by a high chain link fence. A gate gave access, and beside it a uniformed woman sat at a kiosk, selling tickets.
At ten credits per head, it seemed a small price to pay to get closer to the Column.
We paid and drove on through, together with a dozen other vehicles.
I ignored the press of humanity to either side—distant to begin with but, with the gradual narrowing of the section, becoming closer all the time—and concentrated on the sight ahead. The pillar of light sprang from the earth and rose, perpendicular and solid, into the heavens, and it seemed odd that something so massive should be so silent.